MLB: Phillies drop series opener to Mets

New York Mets relief pitcher Bobby Parnell, left, and catcher Anthony Recker, center, celebrate as Philadelphia Phillies third base coach Ryne Sandberg runs off the field after a baseball game on Friday, June 21, 2013, in Philadelphia. New York won 4-3. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

PHILADELPHIA — At some point, logic would mandate, the Phillies will start winning some Cole Hamels starts.

Logic can be a defiant soul sometimes.

Hamels is 16 starts into this season – the historic center for a guy who has averaged 32 starts per season over the previous five years. The Phillies are 2-14 in his starts. Two and fourteen.

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In many of those games the Phils have failed to spot him anything as he helplessly tried to pitch better than perfect. However, there have been a handful of games where that was not the case. And Friday night’s 4-3 loss to the Mets was one of the exceptions.

After the game, Charlie Manuel’s frustration with the way his team continually stalls offensively boiled over a bit when he was asked about the competency of his lineup.

“Do I know if the rest of the lineup will hit? Does anyone else know that?” Manuel said with a snarl to the questioner. “I know you don’t know. I don’t know what I can do. If we don’t hit and score runs, I don’t know what I can do about it. I know damn sure you can’t do anything about it.”

The Phillies spotted the struggling southpaw a three-run lead in the second inning against the team 12th in the National League in runs scored -- and the Mets are closer to rock-bottom since riding the oddly hot bat of catcher John Buck to loads of runs in the opening two weeks of the season.

Would more runs have been nice? Certainly. But for the Phillies’ opening-day pitcher and a man considered one of the best pitchers in baseball without a Cy Young award, that should have been ample.

But no. Instead, the Mets whittled away at Hamels, picking up a run in the fourth, two more in the fifth to tie it, then getting an RBI double from Juan Lagares with two outs in the top of the sixth to score Lucas Duda with the go-ahead run.

The Phillies, meanwhile, failed to take advantage of 10 hits on the night. The gaping hole in the order where those opportunities went to die were in the Nos. 2 and 3 spots of the order. Chase Utley and Michael Young both went 0-for-5. For Utley it was his first game after spending four weeks on the disabled list with a strained oblique. He didn’t get any hits In his two rehabilitation games at Double-A Reading, which might have been a sign that he could have used a third game to sharpen his skills. Instead he was whisked back into the meat of the order, and he came up lean.

The Phils got on the board first courtesy of back-to-back doubles by Ryan Howard and Domonic Brown off Jeremy Hefner. A couple of sketchy fielding moves by Mets second baseman Dan Murphy allowed two more runs to cross in the inning, and the Phils seemed to be in a good place for Hamels to end his first-half misery.

It was the 11th loss of the season for Hamels. The team record for losses in the first half of the season is 13, a fate suffered by Ray Benge in 1931. He might have a shot to hit that number before the All-Star break arrives.